December 13, 2017

"Sexually assaulted in full view of millions, the 18-year-old boy really has no option but to treat it as a joke."

I just happened to land on this post from a mere 5 years ago:
Look at the photograph of the hulking Jenny McCarthy grabbing Justin Bieber by the throat and suctioning the back of his neck:
"Wow. I feel violated right now," he said, laughing.

"I did grab his butt," McCarthy said backstage. "I couldn't help it. He was just so delicious. So little. I wanted to tear his head off and eat it."
Imagine the sexes reversed. If you can. McCarthy is more than twice Bieber's age. She's 40. But, oh, she's trying so hard to project sexuality....
I said "stop molesting teenagers. That's not funny, even if circumstances require Bieber to pretend that it is." Here's the photograph:

[PHOTO REMOVED]
 
How did I happen upon that? I was searching my archive for "men's project," after seeing a link at at Instapundit to the Campus Reform piece "The University of Wisconsin-Madison has confirmed that it has disbanded its 'Men’s Project,' a program designed to teach 'men-identified students' about the harms caused by traditional notions of masculinity."

The McCarthy molestation post had the word "men's" ("She first posed for the men’s mag at 21, which helped launch her career as a sexy doofus") and "project" ("She's 40. But, oh, she's trying so hard to project sexuality").

Anyway, the UW "Men's Project." I must have paid attention to that, since it involves my school and topics I care about, but I can't find an old post. My question is whether the Men's Project was as heavy-handed and demeaning as Campus Reform makes it sound.

IN THE COMMENTS: CJ said points to this "SNL" routine with Tina Fey as a teacher fantasizing about sex with her student, played by Justin Bieber. This is from April 2010:

[VIDEO REMOVED]
 
CJ's comment is "I remember watching this when it aired and saying to my fiancee at the time - 'God this skit could've been so much funnier but they're obviously scared of sexualizing Bieber too much - but that's the whole point of the sketch!'"

I think that sketch is great. Pitch perfect, right down to the "I'm going to go call Gloria Allred." It's prescient... about a future that still isn't quite here, the point when #MeToo extends to men accusing women.

Ah, wait, CJ comes back:
Not to spam the comment thread, but I wanted to explain the sketch more - the premise is that Bieber is super cute and even adult women are attracted to him so Tina Fey starts sexualizing him and imagining her life with him as her boyfriend (and lover, it's heavily implied). It's something you could never do with an underage girl, even in jest, and I think SNL knows that. But they wanted to seize on how cute Bieber is and make a sketch about it, but they stopped before it got actually sexual and therefore it's not that funny, just kind of weird.

I don't know if SNL expected the audience to "get it" and take what Tina Fey is doing a step further on our own, and thus it'd be funny because we know what the writers *wanted* to say even though they couldn't say such things on TV about an underage boy, or if they legitimately wanted to stop the joke before it got actually sexual, in which case it's really not all that funny.

50 comments:

David Begley said...

Better for the Badgers to get focused on improving football and basketball.

Bay Area Guy said...

One distinction between the Jenny McCarthy aggressive smooch on Justin Bieber and a reverse hypothetical (say Bieber doing same thing to her) is the absence of any fear or threats attendant to the act. At no time did Bieber feel that crazy,horny Jenny was gonna strip him naked and go much farther. And, for most guys, if a pretty girl does what McCarthy did to Bieber, it's probably taken as playful enjoyment.(man bites dog)

When a man does it to a woman, the fear or shame or humiliation factor often is much greater. If you listen to the women who posed for photos with Franken, and got their butts grabbed, they felt really powerless and humiliated.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Don't forget the Sasha Baron Cohen / Eminem thing at the MTV awards show. That was not sexual assault, it was a pre-planned gag that both agreed to beforehand. But it was still playing what appeared to be a sexual assault for the purpose of laughs.

john said...

Is "the 18-year-old boy" still a boy, even though he's Justin Bieber?

He'd already had several years of pubescent girls throwing themselves at him.

FIDO said...

Back when she was popular, McCarthy was interviewed by some showbiz news show.

I don't recall the question but she said (paraphrased)

"You know...I keep meeting creeps who say they can 'help my career'. SUUUURREEE you can, buddy! I am doing just fine, thanks."

And we all can see how well that bit hubris has served her: Still acting a trollop in her 40s as a D list MC. At least she is hotter and less politically offensive than Kathy Griffin.


But I think Ms. Althouse misses the mark. She isn't sexually harassing the poor boy. She is actually a Talent Vampire and she is desperate for any kind of meal considering her desperate lack herself.

Rick said...

A UW spokesperson would not specify the reason for the program's termination, but did confirm that the school has no plans to convert it into a course for academic credit.

Why would they need to? They already have dozens of courses dedicated to the same goals. The whole point was to attract a different sort of participant. Personally I wish they held it so someone could tape the course and show everyone what they really believe. The organizers seem to have understood this was likely explaining the cancellation.

At the time, UW-Madison was preparing to host the program’s spring cohort, but following coverage from outlets including The Guardian, Fox News, The New York Daily News, The Huffington Post, and multiple local news outlets, the Men’s Project went dark.

So it was cancelled because (a) their efforts were going to become public and discredit them, and / or (b) the publicity would prevent the course attracting the naive and influenceable thus negating its value.

FIDO said...

Maybe the program was starting to attract the Anti-Social Injustice Warriors.

rehajm said...

And, for most guys, if a pretty girl does what McCarthy did to Bieber, it's probably taken as playful enjoyment.

Holy crap- the number of times an episode like this happened to me when I was a kid...I should have felt violated?

I probably need lots of therapy and don't know it.

Sebastian said...

So what? Woman grabs boy/man: uninteresting. Women "felt really powerless and humiliated": interesting!

Let's stay focused: the Reckoning is about vindicating women's feelings.

Ann Althouse said...

You know, I don't accept this behavior even if they got Bieber to agree. First, there's still potential for coercion (unless both McCarthy and Bieber scripted this routine together and go the idea of a staged assault simultaneously). Second, the audience is given the message that sexual assault is just funny and playful (even when a teenager is grimacing and protesting).

Ann Althouse said...

"So it was cancelled because (a) their efforts were going to become public and discredit them, and / or (b) the publicity would prevent the course attracting the naive and influenceable thus negating its value."

They're kind of in a jam, aren't they? How do you do PR about how the whole thing wasn't PR or that you wouldn't just do it for good PR and then stop it because it turned out to be PR? It's still PR. It's PR all the way down. PU.

Ann Althouse said...

"Let's stay focused: the Reckoning is about vindicating women's feelings."

The Reckoning already includes man-on-man. The thing has momentum of its own. It's a Reign of Terror, and you need new heads to roll.

FIDO said...

As long as they are mostly liberal heads, I am good. The Revolution can continue to eat it's own.

Lefty men mock the care Conservative men pay to womyn. I bet they aren't laughing now....

CJ said...

"It's a Reign of Terror, and you need new heads to roll."

Et laissez tomber!

Robiespierre ended up on his own guillotine. Time for some #metoo people to be held to their own standard.

CJ said...

And for another example including Justin Bieber - here's Tina Fey and an underage Bieber in "The Lonely Teacher". You can imagine what it's about - a super cute kid and a lonely female teacher.

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/teacher/n12770?snl=1

I remember watching this when it aired and saying to my fiancee at the time - "God this skit could've been so much funnier but they're obviously scared of sexualizing Bieber too much - but that's the whole point of the sketch!"

CJ said...

Not to spam the comment thread, but I wanted to explain the sketch more - the premise is that Bieber is super cute and even adult women are attracted to him so Tina Fey starts sexualizing him and imagining her life with him as her boyfriend (and lover, it's heavily implied). It's something you could never do with an underage girl, even in jest, and I think SNL knows that. But they wanted to seize on how cute Bieber is and make a sketch about it, but they stopped before it got actually sexual and therefore it's not that funny, just kind of weird.

I don't know if SNL expected the audience to "get it" and take what Tina Fey is doing a step further on our own, and thus it'd be funny because we know what the writers *wanted* to say even though they couldn't say such things on TV about an underage boy, or if they legitimately wanted to stop the joke before it got actually sexual, in which case it's really not all that funny.

JAORE said...

Burn her! Burn the witch!

At present we have no lines drawn, gray or otherwise.

Oh, I see one, if the woman feels shame or humiliation.

So if the Beeb had turned around and pushed her away, JMac would have done something horrible, right?

What if, say, 10 years from now if the Beeb is reduced to a Vegas lounge act, can he try for a few more precious minutes in the spotlight by bringing up his sexual assault by JM?

If so the act can be, playful, harmful, playful now but harmful later....

Nice job, mob, nice job.

Sebastian said...

"The Reckoning already includes man-on-man. The thing has momentum of its own. It's a Reign of Terror, and you need new heads to roll." True, and I thought from the outset that progs miscalculated, since the Terror hurt their own and got out of control.

But they are trying to regain control, turn the Reckoning into the Narrative. To make that turn, they need women. "We Dems have cleaned house. We Dems truly respect women. We Believe You." Etc. Etc. Call it what you will -- the Fetishization Gambit, the Revenge of the Ingas.

The man-on-man Reckoning may fester but is not politically useful. In fact, it is dangerous: too much Reckoning may expose gay cruelty and disease no one wants to Reckon with. It will be contained soon enough, when Dems and the MSM feel they've done enough house-cleaning.

At some point, enough heads have rolled. My guess: when the next Dem is elected president.

rhhardin said...

Guys like being hit on by women.

Guys don't like being mugged.

A sexual difference turns it from mugging to nice.

I can't view the thing owing to dialup connection speeds but if he feels the lady's boobs in his back that's cool. Boob nestling is always appreciated.

Althouse does't want the asymmetry between the sexes because it makes it harder to claim a principle is involved instead of a sexual difference. And if it's a sexual difference what's it doing in the law.

Virgil Hilts said...

Sorry, but the sexes are different and there is nothing wrong with what JM did.
Trying to pretend that the sexes are exactly the same when it comes to this type of behavior is not consistent with how most men feel. I have no problem with the rules being different and I hope they continue to be different.

Fernandinande said...

"Wow. I feel violated right now," he said, laughing.

"Oh, the horror", he wrote, laughing derisively.

Michael said...

God, that is exactly what Kamala Harris did to me in an elevator in San Francisco. It's just come back to me.

rehajm said...

...about a future that still isn't quite here, the point when #MeToo extends to men accusing women

That future isn't coming. If you believe it is you don't know what is happening or why it is happening or why it is happening now.

Rick said...

The man-on-man Reckoning may fester but is not politically useful. In fact, it is dangerous: too much Reckoning may expose gay cruelty and disease no one wants to Reckon with. It will be contained soon enough, when Dems and the MSM feel they've done enough house-cleaning.

I'm not sure it can be contained. Different groups have different interests and while they are allies the group interested in control couldn't deliver on their promise that control would result in political power which could translate into more resources and better policy weapons. It seems likely those who didn't get their reward will decide the terror is a better path to power.

jr565 said...

Didn’t Jenny McCarthy go up to men during New Years even celebration and start kissing them? And it was FUNNY to the ppl at the show. That’s just Jenny being Jenny.
In retrospect, should she have been charged with sexual assault?

tokyov said...

It doesn't matter how old Bieber was according to the new Victorian spirit. I mean, all Trump had to do was supposedly to look the wrong way at a full-grown woman (a beauty contestant, no less, who was there to be looked at), or ask for another's phone number. Things are so bad, I even got an email from Legal Zoom yesterday offering services to help people avoid sexual harassment problems in the workplace.

jr565 said...

John wrote:

He'd already had several years of pubescent girls throwing themselves at him.”
Yes, I imagine he got a lot of women throwing themselves at him. And he probably grabbed a lot of pussy of women who let him do so. Same as trump. As a billionaire celebrity I’m sure he had NO PROBLEMS getting willing women who were happy to have the attention of someone thst powerful and rich.

Power and celebrity are aphrodisiacs for many women, for men it’s tits and ass, yet, to hear women on left who accused trump of sexual assault they apparently lived in a nunnery. No woman would ever willingly agree to having pussy touched by a celebrity. NO WAY thst would ever happen.

Only you just have to look at a def leopard show to see thst they had groupies at every event who were there precisely becaise they wanted to have their pussy grabbed by one of the band members.or if not def leopard, then Justin Bieber. Or any band actually. Even josh Grobin, who seems like the biggest goodie two shoes probably has groupies back stage who he can bed at the drop of a hat.

Luke Lea said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
CJ said...

"Things are so bad, I even got an email from Legal Zoom yesterday offering services to help people avoid sexual harassment problems in the workplace."

I got the same email. I wonder why Legal Zoom is offering to help avoid harassment problems and not hawking its services to the harassed. Seems like the cheapo-depot of legal services could do more volume on the harassed than the people that are avoiding it given how much #metoo there is.

Luke Lea said...

How about the scene in Almost Famous in which a band of groupies dance around the movies 14 year old hero, strip him naked, and initiate him into sex? Was that assault or comedy? I vote comedy. https://youtu.be/dgIUguOYYtg?t=25s

The movie was also a great reveal of the whole groupie phenomenon when it came to 1960's rock stars: they let you grab their pussies. Apparently there is something similar with respect to big time college athletes, as we saw in Tom Wolfe's Who is Charlotte Simmons.

Saint Croix said...

It's something you could never do with an underage girl, even in jest, and I think SNL knows that. But they wanted to seize on how cute Bieber is and make a sketch about it, but they stopped before it got actually sexual

There are a surprisingly high number of female teachers who are being arrested for having sex with underage boys in their classes.

At least as high as the number of high-profile men who are being exposed as sex harassers.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Ann Althouse said...You know, I don't accept this behavior even if they got Bieber to agree. First, there's still potential for coercion (unless both McCarthy and Bieber scripted this routine together and go the idea of a staged assault simultaneously). Second, the audience is given the message that sexual assault is just funny and playful (even when a teenager is grimacing and protesting).

I'm going to have to save a macro to avoid having to type this out every time:
Whatever women do is empowering. If a woman "playfully" sexually assaults a young man, or pantomimes doing so, that's empowering and we must respect and applaud her choice.
I hate to go back to it again, but the Vagina Monologues is the perfect example. In that widely-praised "feminist" work one of the stories features an adult woman having sexual relations with/committing statutory rape on an emotionally-disturbed 13 year old girl. That particular story included the narrator (the young victim) saying "if it was rape, it was a good rape." Now any work of fiction written in the mid 90's featuring a male protagonist coercing a 13 year old girl into sex and then having that victim praise the experience would have gotten the author publicly flogged--even moreso if the work itself was held up as pro-feminist/pro-woman! But, you see, ANYTHING A WOMAN DOES IS EMPOWERING and therefore no just ok, but praiseworthy.

Jenny McCarthy is a woman. Her other-wise inappropriate groping of a young man is therefore empowering and criticism of it is anti-woman, slut-shaming, etc.

Fernandinande said...

"Wow. I feel violated right now," he said, laughing.

"Oh, the horror", he wrote, laughing derisively.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

tokyov said...It doesn't matter how old Bieber was according to the new Victorian spirit. I mean, all Trump had to do was supposedly to look the wrong way at a full-grown woman (a beauty contestant, no less, who was there to be looked at), or ask for another's phone number.

I don't think you understand, tokyov: she was NAKED under her robe. And he was in the same room as her, while she was NAKED (under her robe). Think about how you'd feel if you were in the same room as someone and you happened to be fully NAKED underneath whatever covering you have on your body!? Is that the kind of thing you want people to have to deal with? Shameful.

mockturtle said...

There needs to be a clear definition of 'sexual assault'. When I was 22 I was violently raped in my own home where my baby was sleeping in her crib. It infuriates me to hear such actions as ass-grabbing and unwanted kissing called sexual assault.

jimb82 said...

Since when is an 18-year old a boy? There are 19-year olds right now carrying weapons in Afghanistan and serving on submarines and flying as crew in aircraft. (Not many 18-year old, because 18-year old enlistees are mostly still in training). Not to belabor the point, but during the Depression my father finished school at 13 and was at work swinging a hammer. My uncle enlisted at 15 and fought in Korea as a 16-year old. The recent trend of extended adolescence is harmful to society. He's a man, damn it!

roesch/voltaire said...

For men accusing women see the art work of Edward Munch's Vampire or read Strindberg's plays.

Freeman Hunt said...

Why is it that so many women have a thing for members of bands?

glenn said...

Thankfully none of you know how I fantasized about bedding my 7th grade science teacher the glorious Miss James. Think a green eyed, auburn haired Lola Albright. I might get in trouble for what I was thinking 65 years ago.

gurugeorge said...

There's a fair amount of hypocrisy on all sides re. this.

For example: it's true that there are lots of 18 year old boys who wouldn't mind being "molested" by a good-looking MILF.

But there are probably lots of 18 year old girls who wouldn't mind being "molested" by a rich, handsome older guy.

Whether a pass or an attempt at seduction is unwanted has a lot to do with the status and looks of the person attempting the seduction. Neither male nor female would welcome an attempt at seduction from a toothless tramp, but could easily be quite excited by a well-favoured, high status person showing interest in them.

And then of course there are the few that would find anything of that sort horrifying - but there are males who are like that too, it's not just females.

wholelottasplainin said...

Anyone remember the SNL skits where Buck Henry played a creepy old uncle with a camera he used to take upskirt photos of his nieces?

The SNL audience obviously loved them, but just try that premise today......

#JustNotFunny

Yancey Ward said...

Are there really that many "men" attending UW?

Vader said...

""It's a Reign of Terror, and you need new heads to roll.""

The fire is now crowning.

Howard said...

It's not a double standard because men and women are different.

Big Mike said...

He’s nicely set up to execute the O Goshi throw. If he hangs onto her left arm and twists as she comes down he can dislocate her shoulder.

Mrs. Bear said...

Regarding the Legal Zoom email discussed above, my guess as to why it would be addressed primarily to those concerned about being accused of harassment rather than to the harassed would be that, as Willie Sutton was alleged to have observed regarding why he robbed banks, that's where the money is. I suspect that the group of people most likely to be accused, truthfully or not, of such harassment would average more powerful and wealthy than the harassed.

Jeff H said...

By 2010, SNL had been unfunny for at least 25 years.

David said...

How about a tag for "Reign of Terror?"

Dilly, Dilly!

n.n said...

There is a conditional probability that can accurately predict the outcome of this situation.

Given an attractive women, the probability is one that her affection will be welcome. However, this is a joint probability, that approaches 0.5 with ages below puberty.

Big Mike said...

@nn, if one is a married man, the probability that attentions from an attractive woman who is not one’s wife are welcome is much less than one. As the proximity of the wife increases and the attractiveness of the non-wife female goes down, the probability that the attention is welcome uniformly decreases and asymptotically approaches zero.